Chevy. Beyond that, the car may be mashed
flat and freighted to a shredding and repro
cessing center such as Sidbec-Feruni Inc.
(above), located at Contrecoeur, Quebec.
Large-scale reprocessing of junked cars
for their steel goes back at least to the late
1930s, and scrap now makes up about a
third of new steel produced. So a showroom
beauty may have within it remains from
Studebakers, Packards, Edsels, DeSotos,
Nashes, Kaisers, Hudsons, Crosleys, and
Willys Aeros. And, of course, washing ma
chines and toasters have their odd molecules
of Cadillacs, Lincolns, and Chryslers. Yet
despite the recycling of steel, the manufac
ture of new cars still accounts for 10 percent
of all industrial energy use.
About a fifth of junked cars are bulldozed
into landfills or rust away in weedy obscu
rity, never to be reborn.